


I Thought You Beside Me

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dreamwalking, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-02
Updated: 2012-11-02
Packaged: 2017-11-17 14:19:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/552477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Canon divergence from around 7x15. While the Winchester's are on a job, Sam's wall breaks and he falls into a coma. Dean decides to try African Dream Root in an attempt to infiltrate his dreams and save him. It seems to work and inside Sam's head walls bleed, buildings spring from nothing and Dean finds some remaining part of Cas. He also finds Lucifer. Travelling through an ever changing dreamscape full of things Dean would rather forget, Dean and Cas collect pieces of Sam so that Cas can put him back together and get back to saving the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Thought You Beside Me

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Dean/Cas Big Bang '12. Will post a link to the awesome art as soon as the post exists!

But my thought belied me  
And you were not there  
But only the trees that shook  
Only a storm that broke  
Through the dark air.  
\- Mervyn Peake

 

In the beginning Dean used to dream about Castiel, fierce and bright, an angel of the Lord. In the end too, smeared in blood and black goo, on his knees and pleading. Dean can deal with those dreams, he’s been to Hell and real life always trumps copycat dreams. But these new ones are different. Castiel is a puppet or a piece of folded paper, a few seconds of lightning shot film. Cas is words too, over and over, helpmehelpmehelpmehelp and later Dean. When Dean wakes from these dreams he’s up and half way across the room, a knife in hand, damp with sweat and gasping before he even realises he is conscious. He can feel it even then, a prickling under his skin like needles and Cas’ brand, the hand print seared into his shoulder, burns.

Sam doesn’t notice that Dean is a twitching wreck, almost too wired to sleep, because Sam is sleeping enough for the both of them. When he is awake, when he has to be, when they aren’t in a car or in a motel, he rarely speaks. A few weeks earlier he was jumping at shadows and snapping at Lucifer who crept on the edges of his mind, but now he spends all his energy keeping everything in. Dean watches him constantly, sees his mouth pressed hard in a thin line and his hands clutching at the scar, until they stop doing that at all and hang limp at his sides. Dean makes jokes about zombies but feels sick every time Sam’s eyes meet his. They are dead, or dying, like they had been when he was without his soul. Dean wonders what is worse, something damaged beyond repair or missing entirely.

One morning Sam doesn’t wake up at all. They’re in Blackfoot, Idaho hunting a group of vampires when it happens. Dean wakes up screaming and Sam doesn’t budge, so Dean keeps screaming. He yells himself hoarse, he pushes and prods and pulls Sam’s stupid, girly hair, but the only move Sam makes is the gentle rise and fall of his chest which keeps Dean from tearing the whole damn town down around them. Only when he can taste blood and there’s a hammer behind his eyes does Dean stop. He slumps into a chair and glares at his comatose brother. Sam moves.

First it’s his hands, twitching uncontrollably, each finger jerking and cracking and curling into itself. Then it’s his mouth, gasping wide open and sucking in deep, rattling breaths that go on forever and sound like they’re ripping his throat to shreds. Dean is on his feet like a shot and he presses himself to Sam, grips his arms tight, presses a palm to his mouth to stop that awful sound, tries to keep him together. Sam bites his hand. Sam’s nose starts bleeding.

“Sammy, Sam.” Dean’s eyes are burning and all he can think is that Sam won’t open his. “Goddammit, wake up.” Sam stills and is exactly the same as before. Dean wipes the blood from his face with the hem of his t-shirt, he scrapes back his hair and it takes him fifteen minutes to make a decision. He’ll find somewhere safe and he will fix this.

Hauling his brother into the car is exactly as difficult as it sounds and not nearly as enjoyable. Dean actually feels guilty folding Sam’s long limbs into the back seat of the car. But that doesn’t stop him being a little rougher than he needs to, knocking Sam’s head against the window and watching intently to see if it wakes him up. It doesn’t. Dean covers Sam with a blanket he steals from the motel, stocks up on chocolate bars, gas station sandwiches and black tar coffee and leaves Idaho without looking back.

Dean is good at getting places fast and inconspicuous. Smart enough not to drive so fast he attracts attention, he knows that getting pulled over would be a disaster. He’s scared enough and sleep deprived enough that he’d say something terrible and incriminating. They’d see Sam in the back, they’d find the guns in the trunk, they’d see the flask on the passenger seat and they’d think they had bagged themselves a regular psycho. Jeffrey Dahmer with better hair.

So he keeps his eyes dead set on the road and on the mirrors and on Sam. He feels all tied in knots, the usual healing power his baby has is wasted this time. Long stretches of road and the growl of the engine are dulled by saving Sam, on a mission. He keeps his hands at ten and two.

They’re heading to Rufus’s cabin in Montana. It’s middle of nowhere territory and small enough to ward to shit, the perfect sort of place for any kind of last stand. Except, of course, it’s not. It’s him and his brother and there’s no hope for either of them killing anything stronger than a mosquito really. Dean taps his ten and two fingers against the wheel, he hums aggressively and downs cold coffee like he wants to drown in it.

Sam looks almost like he could be sleeping, like it’s a week ago and he’s sleeping in the car all the time. It’s this that sparks Dean’s memory. Sleep had been a problem before, Bobby in a coma and all your demons in all your dreams and Dean had been on the verge of Hell. They’d used African Dream Root and it had tasted awful but allowed them to charge through dreams like they were real. He spends the next few hours figuring out who he can get it from and then convincing himself that it’s the only way when he realises exactly who that is. Crowley will make this difficult. Crowley will have an awful price.

It’s late afternoon when they arrive and Dean is all business. He hauls Sam into the shack and sets him up on the couch in the main room, tucks his arms in at his sides and props his head up with a pillow. With him settled and breathing quiet, Dean relaxes slightly. This will work, he’ll find Sam in dreams and turn this all right. Maybe. Definitely. 

He doesn’t want Crowley anywhere near Sam like this so he moves everything he’ll need into the other room. Blood and herbs and smoke and chalk. In the only other room of the house, on a coffee table he drags in from the main room, he sketches out a sigil. Bobby had taught them both how to summon Crowley if they needed to, he’d thought it prudent considering how often that actually happened, and Sam had rolled his eyes and Dean had grumbled and silently decided that the only time he would use it would be so he could stab Crowley in the face.

But he lights the candles anyway and he opens up a vein over a bowl of herbs, speaks the magic words, checks the demon trap.

“Just when I thought you couldn’t get any more obnoxious.” Crowley looks harried, brushing down his suit and inspecting the edges of the demon trap with a wrinkled nose. “You know you can’t just pull me out of Hell whenever you feel like it. I was in a meeting.” Dean makes sure he can see the jagged knife he has in his hand.

“It’s Sam,” he growls and Crowley raises his eyes skyward, scuffs his shoe absently across the wooden floor, shoves his hands deeper into his pockets.

“Oh really? I’m so surprised,” he deadpans. “What has the moose done this time? because if it’s started the apocalypse again, I will happily stuff him full of sweets, hang him from a tree and hit him until it stops being fun.”

“He’s just in trouble and I need something to fix it.” Dean brandishes the knife like a parent scolding. “And this isn’t one of your regular deals either. This isn’t ten years and then hell hounds at dawn. This is you helping me and me not killing you.”

‘It’s sweet that you think we do that.” Crowley’s eyes lazily follow the knife’s movement as he speaks and Dean grips it tighter. “Especially considering how aggressively you turned off the last one of my allies. How is young Castiel anyway?” Dean steps forward, the knife shaking in his hand, Crowley smirks.

“Cas is dead,” Dean snaps and the demon presses a hand to his heart (his vessel’s heart, his non-heart) and offers a soft, entirely sarcastic oh in sympathy.

“Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. A bit stupid, wasn’t it, thinking he could swallow all those souls like that. Who could have planted such an awful idea in his pretty little head?” Dean really is going to stab him in the face, for thinking he has the right to talk about Cas at all. Crowley raises a hand and Dean realises he’s almost in the demon trap himself, clutching the knife so hard his hands look like bones. He steps back.

“This is the deal, which you will accept or I will kill you. After Sam is safe I will help you destroy every last leviathan there is, if you get me some African Dream Root.”

“You’ve got cheap, Dean.” Crowley actually looks faintly disappointed. “Not interested.”

“Let me put this another way,” Dean smiles winningly, a salesman’s smile. “You get me what I need or I let the leviathans do whatever the hell they want. I’ve got nothing left here, they can burn this whole world up until it’s just ashes and then they can turn their attention to you, I don’t care. The only thing stopping me from kicking up my heels and drinking the rest of my life away is Sam, and he’s not looking so good right about now.”

“Pretty speech,” Crowley murmurs, inspecting his fingernails with a grimace. “But here’s the thing, hunters are a dime a dozen, you little shit, what’s to stop any of them annihilating the hinge-jawed nasties without any help from Rocky and fucking Bullwinkle?”

“I think you like yourself too much to take that risk.” Crowley narrows his eyes and Dean thinks he might just have won.

“And they say you’re the stupid brother,” Crowley sneers and Dean has definitely won, he grins. “I might want to help you, but I’m all locked up in this trap which, by the way, kind of ruins the theory that you have any smarts at all when you consider the sweet little pets I have at my beck and call as well as your particular experience with them. But, you know, we can’t all be Einstein now, can we. You’re lucky I hate Dick so much.”

“Not what I’ve heard,” Dean says cheerfully, kneeling to scratch at the paint that makes up the demon trap. They’re both beaming, Crowley’s smile calculating, smug like everything he does. Dean’s is genuine, he really is going to kill this asshole one day, and when that day comes he won’t feel anything, but relief. “So, you’re going to help me then?”

“I’ll get you your dream vegetable. And you will do what you do and no, the deal doesn’t hinge on whether or not Sam comes up pink cheeked and squalling because you idiots are constantly on the verge of death and, more often than not, it’s nothing to do with me. I get you the root, you kill Dick and his lackeys. That is the deal, Dean, that is all you’re going to get.”

“And if I say no?”

“If you say no, I’m sure you’ll kill me and then my cutest hellhounds will tear you to pieces and drag you down below.”

“I’m not kissing you.”

“Like I’d want to. Not everyone is as charmed by your bee stung pout as our Castiel was.”

Our. Our. That single word makes Dean want to kill Crowley now, no waiting, filleted up real nice and sparking at the edges. He would do the one thing he can’t do, the one thing that would break him most. He would take his time torturing Crowley until all he could see was red, but he’d be doing it for his family: for Bobby, for Sam, and for Cas. His smile is gone.

“Roll up your sleeve and come here,” Crowley orders and Dean does it, sharp in his movements and cold. He holds his arm out and Crowley draws a pen from nowhere, brilliant gold and etched in Enochian lettering. “I know you’ve got Castiel’s name all over you but he’s going to have to share.” Dean flinches at the cold metal on his skin, Crowley scribbling something, his name, on the inside of his wrist. Not blood or ink just a white line, a scar that fades immediately. “The deal is made, tattooed on your skin, and if you don’t kill the leviathan before they kill me, the words will eat through you like acid and you will die screaming and then comes Hell.”

Crowley doesn’t know anything about Hell, Dean thinks grimly, because he wasn’t taught by Alistair. He holds out a hand and Crowley shakes it firm and quick and he’s gone with a breath.

Dean prepares while he’s waiting, sets up a sleeping bag on the floor next to the couch where Sam lies. He paints the walls red with wards, everything he can think of except the sort that will keep Crowley from coming back with the dream root. He’ll do those ones after. Nothing will get to them.

Luckily he doesn’t have to wait long, Crowley gets back fast, rolling several stubs of the root around in the hollows of his hands. Enough for years of sleep, Dean thinks.

“Here’s your present. Easy to get, tastes disgusting.” Crowley dumps the pieces onto the arm of the couch, glancing at Sam for a moment before turning his attention to the dripping walls. “Nice paint job, by the way, very vicious.” He drags a finger through the wet paint, wrinkles his nose, wipes it on Sam’s shirt and has disappeared before Dean can even react.

“Sure you don’t want to stay for tea and cookies?” Dean growls at the empty air and he snatches up the root. He gathers everything together, cinnamon and ginger and sharp things to make it taste less like the grime you get in the corners of window frames. He grinds up the root, he mixes the tea, not using it all, just a bit, unsure of whether quantity equals time. Unsure of how any of it works really. He leaves the tea to steep and paints the rest of the wards. They’re for demons, for Crowley, and he imagines it’s blood splashing the walls not paint. He carefully takes a swab from Sam’s mouth and adds it to the steaming tea. Easier to swallow than hair or blood.

The guns and knives he jams into his belt and boots and straps across his chest are precautions. For inside and out. He doesn’t know if they’ll stick or if they need to. He puts a gun in Sam’s pocket and pats him on the chest, half-heartedly attempting to remove the paint stain Crowley left behind with his thumbnail.

“It’s gonna...it’s going to be fine. You’re stronger than this Sammy and...it’s going to be fine,” Dean sighs. He sits down on the sleeping bag, carefully placing the steaming mug on the floor next to him. “Don’t say I never do anything for you.” He drains the mug in one gulp, scalding his mouth and gagging a little but getting it down. He closes his eyes, he settles, he dreams.

Dean half expects a room cut in two. Sam’s ruined wall set out like a diagram: here be monsters. A line of salt, broken. But what he gets is a field, as wide as he can see. All swaying golden grass and dusty light. It’s blank in a way that scares him, like tapes of whale song and those stupid desk ornaments filled with sand and water. Nothing like Sam.

A smudge on the horizon is the first thing Dean sees that might not be the waist high, sharp as a whip grass so he heads right for it. He breaks into a run when he realises what it is and he’s leaning on his knees and panting as he hits the front steps of Bobby’s house. It looks exactly as it should, warn in and comfortable. Maybe, hidden in the grass, there are broken up cars, vehicle’s shells. This is better, this he would expect in Sam’s head. The place they know better than anywhere.

Inside, it’s all books. Most of them don’t have titles and Dean flips one over to find blank pages. But his fingers come away smudged in charcoal. There is fire behind everything, almost burning through all the rest. Engine grease and whiskey and gunpowder and Bobby. He puts the book carefully back in place, it’s pages cleaned of the gritty streaks of ash and restored to pristine white.

“Dean?” His hands are drawing every sort of weapon before he realises that nothing he’d had on him had stuck. Plus, it’s Sam.

“Shit, Sammy, give a little warming.” Sam looks exactly like he should, no blank space there. He’s narrowing his eyes at Dean like he’s not sure if he believes what he’s seeing, like he’s testing out the truth, and apparently Dean passes because after a minute his shoulders slump.

“What are you doing here, Dean?”

“Oh, nothing much. Got my hands on some African dream root, thought I’d take a look inside my kid brother’s head.” Dean grins at the realisation dawning on San’s face. “Gotta say, not as perverted as I’d expect. I might be a little disappointed.” But Sam doesn’t smile, he just shakes his head and stares like Dean’s the one in the middle of an actual psychotic break, Sammy.

“You shouldn’t be here.” For a second there is something in his eyes, panic and fear, blood and fire.

“Course I should.” Dean drags a finger across one of the shelves and frowns as it comes away clean. “It’s not like I could just leave you laid out like McMurphy, visit on weekends or something. Who’d bring me my pie?”

“Good to see you’re still focusing on what’s important.” All Dean can do is shrug and he continues to pace the room, inspecting the blurred out detains and realising he can’t actually remember what Bobby’s wallpaper looked like either. But somehow, even without the details, it’s still Bobby’s. All the pieces are in the right place, so he doesn’t notice the ones that aren’t or the ones that are missing entirely. It makes him feel vaguely guilty. But Sam is staring at him and he nods slow, clears his throat.

“You’re not looking so bad, you know, considering.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know, you’re all in one piece, enormous as ever.”

“Dean, before you got here I used all the strength I had left to make this place safe, and then I tried to leave. It’s Hell out there, literally, and I can’t keep...I can’t keep him away.” Bruises bloom under Sam’s eyes and across his cheekbones, green and blue and gone in a second. His eyes blink bloody.

“Him? Who’s him and what’s your face doing?” Dean’s hands itch for a weapon, he wants to desperately injure the thing that has desperately injured his brother. He doesn’t know who that is, Cas for pulling him out wrong, Lucifer for stealing him and taunting him and breaking him, or Dean himself, because even though Sam probably (definitely) couldn’t have avoided their life, it was Dean who had dragged him into it.

“Lucifer,” Sam whispers, the house groans, the air shivers. “He’s here somewhere Dean, I think he’s real.”

“Real like not a figment of your uh...brain damage?”

“Real like he could make me say yes.” Dean goes cold, ice seeps into his blood and he grits his teeth to shatter it.

“But not while you’re in here.”

“Not until my strength goes entirely, Dean. But it won’t last forever.” And even as he speaks, the walls shudder and creak and thin, rusty looking water oozes down the seams in the wallpaper. “And now you’re here and...what exactly do you think you’re going to do?” Sam’s voice is breaking anger and fear.

“What else was I supposed to do?” Dean rolls his eyes, wanting to burn Sam with scorn so badly that he caves and lets Dean do whatever he wants, let him fix this. “I wasn’t going to leave you like that, Sammy. I’d go crazy.”

Sam softens at that and for a moment everything is fine. They are brothers drinking beer in the sunshine or driving forever, not two broken things lashed together by love and blood and some really quite severe codependency.

“I’ll rebuild your wall. Out of fucking dirt and water if I have to,” Dean announces and Sam actually smiles at that.

“All physically building a wall will do is wear you out.”

“I’ll find Lucifer then. I’ll kill him, he can’t be like he was on the outside. He’s a dream in here.”

“A nightmare, maybe,” Sam concedes with a shrug. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Why are you so calm about this, Sam? You should be...you should be feeling something at least.”

“Before you showed up, I was fine. I made the house and I was so strung out trying to hold it together that I couldn’t even think about what was happening. Now you’re here and I...I’m so fucking angry at you Dean, I want you to leave because you will die in here. But I can’t be angry, I can’t because if I shout or scream or punch your stupid face, I’ll lose it completely, I’ll destroy everything. So I’m going to try and stay calm, just until I convince you to get out.” Sam’s expression is savagely calm, his muscles quivering with effort, his lips pressed white-hard and his eyes desperate and bloodshot still.

Dean has seen his brother worse than this, he’s seen his brother shaking, his teeth stained with demon blood and his eyes flashing black. This isn’t bad. This is nothing. Easy as pie. His smile feels like it’s stretching his face.

“You know I won’t leave, Sammy, that’s just not...where do you even get these ideas? So you may as well let me trek through your dreams and, you know, kill the devil. Just like old times.”

For a minute Sam looks like he’s going to fight, his fists clench and his shoulders hunch over, he looms. But then all the tension drains out of him, he sags into an armchair, he nods over and over again and he places his hands palm down on his knees. He takes a breath.

“You put my DNA in the tea, right? You can do whatever you want in here.” He is smiling but it falls at the edges, he’s too tired and beaten for it to be true, not beaten by Dean but by everything else. “Just don’t do anything weird.”

Dean’s smile is slow and his fingers twitch with possibility. He can’t say he’s not tempted, a whole room full of slick flesh and hands and mouths and all of them with such blue eyes and hair all on end and stubble that would graze his mouth open and a bloodstained trench coat forgotten somewhere but the tie would still be there tangled in his fist and...

“Dean.” Dean almost leaps out of his skin and he coughs and coughs into the cuff of his jacket until the noise ruins all his thoughts. Bad thoughts. Entirely wrong thoughts and this is probably the worst place imaginable to be having them actually. Sam is staring at him and Dean glares right back.

“What? I’ll be careful, shit.”

“Right.”

“You didn’t happen to magic up any of Bobby’s arsenal when you were building this place did you?” All Dean can see is books, more and more every time he blinks, books and bleeding walls. Sam looks incredulous.  
“You’re kidding right? What part of you can do whatever you want in here didn’t you get?” Sam cocks his fingers at Dean like a gun. “Make your own.” And that thought is almost as attractive as armies of slutty angels with devil’s hands.

With wide gestures and comic book action sounds, Dean sets about amassing more weapons than they’d ever hope to fit in any car. Guns fall from the air in droves and suddenly he has several hundred of Ruby’s super special demon knife. He laughs and tucks an angel sword into his belt, Sam rolls his eyes.

“I don’t know how important it is that you have the right weapons, none of it’s real.”

“Except Lucifer,” Dean points out but Sam shakes his head dubiously.

“Well yeah, but not physically. I don’t even know if killing him is possible in here. Besides, I’m pretty sure an angel sword wouldn’t work on him anyway, the colt didn’t.”

“Jeez, give me more impossible tasks why don’t you,” Dean grumbles, tapping at the hilt of the sword. It’s comforting somehow, even though it’s just cold metal, it reminds him of Cas.

“Hey, I didn’t ask you to come here. I don’t even want you here.”

“Yeah well I am, and I’m using the angel sword.”

Dean doesn’t have a plan, but that’s not unusual. All he knows is that Sam will stay in Bobby’s house and keep himself together and he will charge through whatever Sam’s dreams throw at him until he can kill Lucifer and save his brother. It’s necessary, despite Sam’s anger and fear and hope and it will work perfectly because it has to. That’s all that Dean will focus on, not the possibility of failure, not the tiniest bad thought, just positive reinforcement.

He nods at Sam once before heading for the door and Sam sits back down, amongst all of the weapons Dean left behind, melting together on the floor, and he folds his hands together in his lap (no scar in here, the house is his protection, not real, not real, not real) and he keeps the nails in the walls and the locks on the doors and he waits.

The grass is different when he steps outside. The stems grow taller and red and the leaves are scorched and thin. Sam’s anger. But the sun shines soft and gold still and the wind is light and it’s a perfect day underneath the ash and the blood. Dean takes this as a good sign and decides to make it even better.

“Come on baby,” he croons, wiggling his fingers and stepping off the porch. He concentrates on smooth black and silver and the purr of an engine. He knows the Impala like the back of his hand and he thinks it should be easy to wave it up out of nowhere but all he gets is smoke and a road. Long and cracked and straight as an arrow. Then come the buildings. A strange mix of falling down skyscrapers and picket fence painted ladies. He didn’t have time to think them into existence, they just are, and as Dean walks the road he starts to recognise them. Lisa waves from one house, Ben plays in the front yard. Anna stands in front of her parent’s home, a statue, burned and crumbling. There are people and places he barely recognises too, people from hunts, people saved, or not. Dean waves an arm, tries to wish it away, the buildings tremble but nothing changes.

There are monsters too, watching out windows and prowling fence lines. Lions and tigers and bears. The road is separate, a bubble, the houses repeat and the people (monsters, devils) grow frantic. With blank eyes and no memories, Ben, dressed in a leather jacket with a gun at his hip, throws himself at Dean anyway and is burnt up every time. Flayed and fried.

“It’s not gonna work, asshole.” Dean brandishes a limp fist at the sky. But he doesn’t think this is Lucifer. He thinks this is him. Deep down he’s full of obvious symbolism and horrible shit.

Strangely it’s Cas who stops it. Flickering on and off like a neon sign in the middle of the uncrossable road, blue flames for eyes, blood soaked paper for wings. It’s his dreams from before made real, or not real. All of this is dreams really, dreams and nightmares and memories and new, shiny, awful bits. Cas is the only anchor. Because Cas is a punch to the gut even in dreams. He kicks at the gravel, which is slowly being replaced by grass, he walks. 

As the road disappears, the grass grows higher and Cas flickers over and over. Paper and glass and string, some child’s voodoo doll. But every time, he’s gone before Dean can see more and he passes it off as wishful thinking, some twitchy part of his brain calling up dreams within dreams. It keeps happening, a toy angel blinking in and out of view and tugging at Dean’s heart every time. He scowls as he walks, his feet hit the ground hard, he marches and it helps him feel angry instead of sad. Angry is better.

The sky goes black, thunder cracks and for a moment he’s startled out of his anger. He wonders if he did that, wrath of God, like Sam’s burnt grass, and the thought makes him laugh. The heavens open up and the downpour is so sudden, so violent and heavy, that Dean slips on the slick grass, stumbles and comes up covered in mud and wet right through. The rain is oily and thin, it stains his hands brown. He scrubs it out of his eyes with the cuff of his jacket and by the time he’s blinking clear the rain has stopped and Castiel is there. 

 

It’s still not quite right, Castiel in the road, but Dean doesn’t think he’s dreaming. Cas’ eyes look made of glass and his coat is paper, but the glass eyes go wide at the sight of Dean soaking wet and furious. He’s moving. He’s real. He’s real? There is that soft sound Dean has come to associate with Cas, the rustle of wings or a too-big trench coat. And then there he is, solid and staring and far too close as always. Not paper, not glass, but cloth and flesh. Wearing the bloodstained coat that’s actually folded carefully in the trunk of every car they steal (and Sam never asks why Dean hasn’t cleaned it up even though it’s disgusting), but dream cleaned and gleaming. The air is hot between them and steam rises from Dean’s dripping clothing.

He almost forgets himself, forgets apologies and anger and all those raw feelings that are still right there, forgets about how and why, and throws himself at his friend, just happy to have him back. But that’s too easy, of course, and instead he takes a step back, he carefully narrows his eyes, his hand brushes at the hilt of the angel sword jammed into his belt.

“Dean?” Cas sounds (looks, head tilted, rumpled and Dean aches) as uncertain as he ever would with his flat, gravelled voice. There is a question there that anyone but Dean might not have heard. He is trying to keep his face blank as he runs through all the things Castiel could be because it can’t possibly be him here. He will destroy anything that pretends. He will tear it’s face off to stop it looking at him like that. “What are you doing here?” Cas sounds concerned and Dean ignores him. It’s a ridiculous question really, it’s the question Dean himself should be asking.

“What are you?” he snarls and he will not regret how cold his voice sounds. The Castiel thing blinks at him.

“I...would tell you that if I knew the answer. I am...mostly Castiel. I am no threat to you.” Dean shakes his head, a jerky movement that betrays his nerves. 

“I’ll decide that, thanks.” Cas looks real enough, his bed hair and tired (blueblueblue) eyes, but he’d had paper wings moments ago. He’d been a dream moments ago. When in Rome... “What are you doing here?” Cas shrugs awkwardly, the movement uncomfortable on his shoulders.

“There is enough left of me that I can appear in the subconscious of those familiar with me. You may have dreamt...” 

“Yeah, thanks for that, Sandman, scared the crap outta me.”

“That was not my intention.”

“Seems you do a lot of stupid without intention.” The silence that falls then is stunned from Castiel’s end and vicious from Dean’s. Cas looks away and for a moment Dean feels victorious. But then he sees Cas’ expression, all shame and anger and confusion. All embarrassment and some kind of pleading, and all that at once is awful. Like kicking a bleeding animal, like hurting something that loves you and doesn’t understand. Dean shrugs, carefully keeping his eyes fixed on some spot of mud on his shirt, on falling drops of water. “Come on then, I better take you to Sam.”

“I’m sorry, Dean, for what I attempted to do. For everything that went wrong,” Cas launches straight into it and Dean just can’t. This isn’t the time. There never will be a time because an apology for that means less than nothing to Dean. This is something he decided a long time ago. As soon as Cas died. As soon as an apology became impossible.

“Sam is a bit weird right now, you can probably guess. Don’t make any sudden moves.”

“I am attempting to apologize Dean, I think it’s important.”

“African Dream Root, in case you were wondering. We did it with Bobby once. I guess I’ll have to wake up at some point, drink some more. Gotta figure out what I’m going to do to get Sam out first though,” rasps Dean through an aching throat. Castiel knows enough to stop there.

“Why is Sam asleep?” he asks after a strained pause. Dean is triumphant, one point to me he thinks savagely and his smile turns hard.

“He’s in a coma. His wall broke. Lucifer’s stalking around here too, we think. Another chance at the apocalypse.” He wants so much for Cas to get angry so that he can. Maybe hitting him in dreams will be more effective. No broken knuckles, dream angels aren’t made of concrete only dust. But Cas just goes silent and hard, his fingers curl up into his palms, he doesn’t falter and he doesn’t even glance at Dean.

There’s nothing in it for Dean, nothing like victory or satisfaction. He’ll kick the dog until it bleeds and cries and it won’t ever bite back.

“Lost your balls, Cas?” Cas echoes in the angel’s head and he shrugs his shoulders awkwardly.

“You can hit me if you want to, if it will make you feel better,” he says hesitantly, stretching out his fingers, cracking every bone.

“Shut up, Cas,” Dean snaps. Cascascas, Castiel thinks. He feels sick about Sam and ecstatic about Dean, he wishes he had one or nothing. He forces himself to think about only Sam because that’s what’s right. It’s his fault, he doesn’t deserve Cas.

“I am sorry, Dean,” he says much later. They’re walking through bloodstained grass. Dean ignores him, turns his face to stone and walks a little faster. “For what I did to Sam and to you.” Dean shakes his head sharply and walks even faster, a march, almost a run. There’s a house ahead, Cas recognises it. He doesn’t chase Dean, he drags at the blades of grass until they cut his fingers, stains them worse.

Dean bursts into the house panting like he’s run a marathon and Sam, who had been sitting on the sofa determinedly keeping himself together, staggers to his feet and stills his shaking hands.

“Dean?” Dean glares at him and waves a hand at the door. Castiel walks through.

Sam blinks once, his face rumpling in confusion, and he squints like he had at Dean, like his Terminator vision is scanning something.

“Cas?” He glances at Dean who shrugs and maybe he smiles a little bit.

“Hello Sam.” Cas is awkward as ever and that’s probably why Sam strides over and hugs him. Both of them are remembering that time he didn’t, that would be awkward, and Sam is grinning like a little kid and even Cas smiles, although it looks a little bit like he’s doing it because he thinks he’s supposed to. It feels almost like it used to and Dean is immediately wary. This is what it feels like before something turns all to Hell, the family portrait before Ellen and Jo were killed, Cas joking about Superman, Bobby. Besides, he should be the first to be that close, it’s just logical.

“Alright, enough Hallmark shit,” he mutters, “it’s not like Cas is suddenly alive either.” And he’s kicking the puppy again, but someone has to be realistic here. “He’s just some tiny piece of Grace, a dream, right Cas?”

“Something like that,” Cas allows. Sam’s eyes have that sharp look, like he’s about to say something annoyingly smart, or win at monopoly.

“But you still have some Grace left? Enough to get out? Come back?” Dean is almost annoyed, he doesn’t want these questions because he doesn’t want to think about Cas coming back. That isn’t an option. He had accepted Cas’ death, at least as much as he could, he’d accepted it while he hoarded the dirty trench coat and had so many nightmares and said Cas’ name with a shiver in his throat. That was what he did, and that was what he would keep doing because Cas. Was. Dead.

“Now that I have found you and Dean, I believe it to be possible.” Cas blinks as Dean walks out of the room, Sam looks sad.

“Don’t worry about him, he didn’t...he hasn’t been...”

“I attempted to apologise but he ignored it.”

“I think he’s probably trying to get his head around you being back. I mean, you’re back.”

“Somewhat, yes.” Cas stares at his hands like they have the answers to all of this. “In a stolen body perhaps, but back.”

“No.” Sam shakes his head. “We met Jimmy, you’re not him. Dean used to talk about it sometimes, usually when he was drunk but he was right too. You move different, you talk different. You’re Cas and he’s...”

“Dead,” Cas finishes sadly, plucking at the fabric of his coat. “In Heaven.” There’s a long silence where they both notice Dean’s absence. All Cas can think about is how he broke Sam, left his soul in Hell, ruined him for more than a year. He clears his throat, “I would like to apologise to you too, Sam. I caused you and Dean a great deal of pain, which was not my intention, but I was responsible for it and I am sorry.” He can’t help the words coming out stiff and flat. He doesn’t know how to apologise with feeling or without duty. Sam just nods.

“I know you are,” he says quietly.” Dean knows you are too. He’s stupid.”

“He has every reason to hate me.”

“Yeah, he does. But he doesn’t hate you, it’ll just take awhile to get back to normal.” Cas thinks normal isn’t likely. Dean will kill him one day, even if he doesn’t mean to. His anger will spill over and Cas is an easy target. Or they’ll abandon Cas. Leave him behind. They will kill him, too.

Dean comes back a few minutes later looking aggressively fine. He claps his hands and bares his teeth.

“So have you explored the house, Sammy? There’s always something squirreled away in Bobby’s. Even dream Bobbys.”

Cas looks around, for the first time noticing where they are.

“Bobby allowed Dean to follow you here?”

“Christ.” Dean stalks out of the room again. Sam scrubs at his face with his hands.

“Shit, Bobby died, Cas,” Sam explains. “He was shot by...by a leviathan.” Cas is choked by that, he swallows and swallows and takes a shallow, scraping breath.

“I...I’m...”

“It wasn’t you Cas,” Sam says hurriedly. “It was Dick, the leviathan. It’s not your fault.” Cas doesn’t respond, he doesn’t know how he could. They stand in awkward, grief stained silence until Dean comes back, clapping his hands again and smiling false.

“Down to business then!” he says, drawing the angel sword from his belt, flipping it his fingers and pointing it at Cas with more than a hint of a threat in his grip.

“You sound like you have a plan,” Sam rolls his eyes. “Go on then.” Dean pauses and shrugs,

“Well, I don’t really know what to do now that I’m in here,” he admits sheepishly. “I had to get to Sam and I did. I’m going to put him back together before” As he speaks, Castiel realises what he can do. How he can redeem himself to Dean and to Sam. He will leave them and he will save them.

“I know a way to put Sam back together,” he says quietly. They both stare at him. “The trauma of the wall breaking will have split other things. There will be fragments, pieces of Sam, important phases of his life represented by who he was during those times. They will be scattered but if we collect them all, I can use them to remake the wall.” He doesn’t mention that he will use his Grace for this, the last of it, the entirety of what is left. This will kill him outright.

“Pieces of Sam?” Dean is incredulous to mask his hope. “Like...limbs?”

“No, Dean, like younger versions of him, or Sam as he was without his soul.”

“Baby Sam?” Dean is pacing now, searching out cracks, problems, all the things that will stop this from working.

“Perhaps.”

“Can they say yes?” Sam’s question seems to suck the air from the room. Dean freezes mid stride, his mouth open and gaping and horrified.

“Yes, Lucifer will be looking for them too.” Cas can see that Sam already thinks they are beaten, in the line of his shoulders and his skin like ash. “But we have Sam.”

“He should be able to...feel for these other parts of him, at least point us in the right direction.”

“I think you’re totally crazy,” Dean leans against the wall, grinning brittle like a dry summer. Cas shakes his head.

“No, it will work.” He sounds certain, he presses his lips together.

“And Sam will wake up, no problem?”

“I will create another wall.”

“Right, so it’ll last a minute then break again? No way.”

I will use my Grace and it will last forever, Cas thinks. “It will be stronger.”

“What else can we do, Dean? We may as well give it a shot,” Sam says, startling both of them. Dean narrows his eyes, then shrugs.

“Your head, your rules. Can you find these fragments like Cas said?” Sam looks thoughtful for a moment, then he nods.

“I can feel something out there. Like I’m spread out across this whole place. I think...I think the closest piece is...in a tree,” he says looking confused and worried. Dean laughs.

“I’m sure, Sammy.”

“He won’t be wrong,” Cas insists.

“Tree climbing,” Dean laughs again. “You’re a nutcase, Sam.”

“I know.”

Sam and Cas accept immediately that Cas will go too even though Dean objects vehemently. He knows it’s sensible but the thought of being alone with Cas for indeterminate stretches of time makes him want to run for the hills. But Sam insists and he’s so set in stone about it that the house trembles.

So they find themselves on the front deck, Dean’s hands are shoved in his pockets and Cas is watching Dean like he’s trying to memorise his face, like that hadn’t happened a long time ago. Dean watches him too, out of the corner of his eyes, pretending he isn’t. They always had that weird something. Dean would make jokes about how Cas stared but he wasn’t exactly looking away. He felt trapped when Cas looked at him, trapped by heat and heartbeats. A good kind of trapped, like when you can’t tear yourself away from a book, or Dr Sexy M.D. during one of the really intense storylines. Hours could go by and he wouldn’t notice. He feels like this now and he wants to smile at Cas’ stare, wide enough and happy enough that maybe Cas will smile back. The best thing in the world.

And then there’s the other things, night time daydreaming where Cas is alive and everything is alright between them and maybe they can get over it if it’s not. Dean uses all his best lines and winks and grins and Cas is sweetly embarrassed and it doesn’t take long before they’re missing almost all of their clothes and even angels sweat if it’s hot enough. But those were thoughts for when he’s desperate and lonely and Sam is somewhere else so he can fumble with the buttons of his jeans and pretend like that’s normal behaviour. He doesn’t know what it means that maybe Cas is alive now, they will go back to normal, they will stare and Dean won’t smile enough though he wants to.

So he remembers reality instead, or whatever wrong and messed up version of reality they’re in right now. Sam’s broken thoughts. He doesn’t smile, he just shrugs and nods and squares his shoulders.

“Okay then, let’s start this.” He checks his weapons, he sheaths and loads and counts things out. “We find all the...the Sam’s and you put him back together and bamf us out of here.”

“I will do everything I am able to help Sam,” Cas concedes and Dean nods like that’s enough.

“You have weapons?”

“No...” Cas looks at his hands like they might suddenly appear. Dean sighs, such an inconvenience to the person who can conjure up anything here, he snaps a sword from the air and hands it to Cas. Just like always, matching weapons and matching causes. Cas will be forgiven and Dean will save the world.

Cas plays with the sword for a moment, flipping it in his hands and disappearing it somewhere up his sleeve or into air, there only when he needs it, a swirling coat and the fiercest fists. They move quickly and quietly through the grass. Dean mutters under his breath occasionally or tells terrible jokes and laughs and Cas is as silent as Cas always is, but he keeps the pace up and that’s what is important.

It’s grass for miles and the colour changes in some places, burnt out white or rust veined red and it grows tall and thick in others. Horror movie grass that makes Dean afraid to look behind him because he knows that if he does, Cas will be gone.

The tree is obviously the tree because it’s the only one. Impossibly tall and thin with a treehouse near the top cradled by branches that shouldn’t be able to hold it. It’s not much more than a box really, each plank of wood seamlessly joined, no windows and a trapdoor in one corner of the floor, a rope ladder hanging from it, all the way down.

Dean climbs the ladder first, ignoring just how perilous it seems and shutting his eyes to the dizzily swaying branches and threadbare rope rungs. When he hauls himself into the small room, he finds Sam, six years old, skinned knees and a sullen expression, sitting cross legged in a ring of salt and he loses his ability to speak. Cas emerges from the ladder looking harried, he glances at the child and then to Dean.

“You should make him come with us,” he says quietly.

“Dad says I can’t leave the circle, Dean, too,” Sam announces, then he glances at Dean uncertainly. “But I think that’s you, too.”

“Yes, this is your brother. Dean, we should hurry.”

“Yeah, uh, hi Sammy. You should listen to this guy, he’s an angel.” Seeing Sam so young makes Dean nervous. He feels like he could corrupt with a word, ruin everything that Sam is now, even though it’s just a projection, not real, only memories. He mentions angels because he knows that they were something that, up until actually meeting one, had given Sam comfort, something he had regarded highly, and he smiles when Sam’s eyes light up.

“A real angel? Can I see your wings?” He gets to his feet. Dean had forgotten how scrawny his kid brother had been, half a boy, all bones.

“No,” Castiel says, frowning. It’s not entirely true, but showing off even a shadow of his wings would take strength that Cas would rather save. “But I am an angel, my name is Castiel.”

“Oh. I knew that.” The boy smiles, crooked and charming. “You look after Dean.”

“Like hell he does.” Dean frowns, jams a thumb to his chest. “Dean looks after Dean.” Sam shrugs and kicks at the salt, smearing it across the floor and breaking the circle.

“Sam told me it was Castiel,” he says, unconcerned. He doesn’t seem to realise what the words mean really. That somehow he’s acknowledging exactly what he is, a memory, someone that doesn’t really exist anymore. “Let’s go then.” He hurtles himself down the ladder with the reckless bravery of the very young. Dean and Cas follow, slower and older and full of fear.

He leads them, the child, like he knows where they’re going and why, romping through the grass like they’re on an adventure. Dean tries to reign him in with his sharpest voice, a big brother’s bark, but Sam just rolls his eyes and grins at Castiel like they’re in on it together. Cas doesn’t say anything because Sam makes him uneasy. He hasn’t exactly had a lot of experience with children but he feels like they are probably small and breakable and shouldn’t be running through dreams like this one is. Even if it’s not really a child at all but a shade, a tiny piece of something real.

They’re in the tallest grass, the horror film grass, when a blast of heat engulfs them. It scorches the grass to nothing leaving behind only cracked earth and acrid smoke. The heat doesn’t burn them but Sam screams and Dean and Cas have drawn their weapons and are a wall in front of him before the smoke clears to reveal what did it. 

It’s made of light, blinding white and crackling with electricity, vaguely human shaped but impossibly tall and featureless. Wings explode from it’s shoulders like lightning, like whip cracks and it hurts to look at it, to hear it. Castiel knows it immediately.

“Castiel, isn’t this a surprise,” it screams and Dean slams his hands over his ears and charges forward like he always does, like he knows what he’s doing and isn’t just running on luck and rage, burnt up salt and iron and admittedly some skill and some knowledge, but he has to know it won’t work. Cas moves, too and he grabs Dean’s collar and hauls him back, takes the child’s hand in his and has zapped them into nothing before Dean can think.

They emerge in a dark, dry pine forest that definitely hadn’t existed before. Dean is spitting mad and throwing sloppy punches that Cas dodges easily and Sam is chewing on the cuff of his sweatshirt, staring at the ground, all his bravado lost or swallowed.

“You gotta ask my permission before doing that shit.” Dean finally calms slightly, though he’s still scowling spectacularly. “I feel violated.”

“I imagine it’s better than the alternative,” Cas snarls in response, so vicious that all Dean can do is blink. “We’re not going to fight Lucifer, Dean. In fact, avoiding him completely is preferable, if you want to save Sam.” Dean splutters with outrage, glancing over at his littlest brother who still has his sleeve in his mouth and is carefully pulling the petals off a pine cone. He’s either unfazed by their unorthodox mode of transport or shaken up so bad he’s gone into shock. He keeps swaying, blinking like he might fall asleep on the spot. He looks younger somehow too, his limbs rounded and his nose running.

“Yeah, well fuck you,” Dean manages, folding his arms across his chest and kicking at the ground. “That was Lucifer?”

“You shouldn’t use language like that around Sam,“ Cas says irritably, “I hear it damages children. And yes, that was Lucifer.” Dean nods once, curt and acting unfazed, but really the crackling light and strange nothingness that had been the Devil was beyond terrifying. Instead of speaking the words, allowing I’m scared to blister his lips and break his teeth, Dean just glares at Cas like he’s the problem and stalks off through the trees. Holding his hand out to the child, Cas follows, pulling the sleep stumbling Sam behind him.

Somehow, despite having no idea where they are, walking in a straight line seems to get them to Bobby’s house quite quickly. It’s dream logic, Dean decides when the house turns up amongst the trees like a fairy tale cottage. He is in charge here. Inside, the two Sams stare at each other with unnerving concentration. The younger Sam has grown several inches and thinned out again but he’s mostly the same and he seems to know inherently that he and Sam are one and the same. He nods a greeting and holds out his hand to shake and maybe he doesn’t quite believe he’ll ever get that big, but that is definitely a Sam he is looking at. Sam, real Sam, sleeping Sam, on the other hand, can barely recognise himself in the round face and skinned knees. Maybe the expression is right, grave and guarded even at five years old, but everything else is wrong. He’s so small. But he shakes his hand anyway, and it’s warm and both of them are trembling, and they smile.

Dean watches the exchange anxiously, feeling like some kind of animal trainer, like maybe the big one won’t like the little one and he’ll have to swoop in to stop a massacre. It’s ridiculous, but Sam is more than a little bit unhinged and he definitely doesn’t want to find out what happens when part of a whole kills another. He can’t wait until they find the older, more volatile, less well liked pieces of Sam. He’s sure that will be more fun than he can stand, even the littlest Sam is stirring things in him. His hair mussed by imagined car rides, cheek pressed cold against the window, nighttime air and Dean is smug because he gets the front seat, but that will fade quickly and he’ll climb into the back with Sam eventually and read him questions from the newspaper quiz and Sam will get them all right.

“I think I’m going to wake up now,” Dean says, because he definitely needs some time to deal with this on his own. “I have to eat and...you’ll be alright with Cas for awhile.”

“Gee thanks Dean.” Sam rolls his eyes.

“Don’t let him leave the house,” Dean says, looking at Cas pointedly, “or the kid. I’ll be back soon.”

He screws his eyes shut, concentrates on being awake and tries to remember how this worked last time. The demon had snapped his fingers. He had snapped his fingers. He hears muffled laughter from both Sams and he claps his hands sharply, screw this, he’s going to make Sam hit him with something, knock him out of the dream. He opens his eyes to Rufus’s shack and laughs.

“Lucky shit,” he says to Sam who is unchanged. A laid out statue on the sofa. He grabs the bottle of water from the floor next to him, gulps down half of it then looks at Sam with a critical eye. Carefully he trickles water into his brother’s mouth, and Sam chokes on some of it and spits out a lot of it but he doesn’t wake up and eventually the bottle is empty (inside his head everything is green and rain pours from skies clear blue and empty of clouds.

He should be getting everything done, before he charges back in and hauls out his brother and his angel. He needs sleep first, he needs to eat first, he needs to break down and build himself back up first. Fresh and new to save the day. Dean Winchester with a wink and a strut.

Instead, he sinks onto the couch. He sighs into the palms of his hands and he rolls his neck until everything cracks. Cas is alive. That was a curveball he could have done without. It’s so much simpler when all there is to focus on is Sam. He doesn’t necessarily prefer it, but it is easier and Dean always picks easy. But now there’s something crawling up his spine and wriggling in his stomach. Cas. (Angel baby, sweetheart, baby). It’s enough to make him sick.

He could have buried these things if Cas had just stayed put. Stayed dead. He’d buried much harder things before. But his angel was always doing the stupid thing, always popping back up when he wasn’t wanted, like he’s teasing, like he knows. He should probably have expected it. He should have known as soon as the dreams started.

Dean glares at his brother across the room, exactly the same, a gigantic slab of useless.

“Wake up!” he screams, throwing a cushion, punching at nothing. (Inside Sam’s head the air gets closer and thunder rumbles). Sam breathes slow and even, his nose is bleeding, a thick trickle across his mouth and down his neck. Dean closes his eyes for just a second and then he gets to work.

He sorts Sam out first, wiping off the blood, making sure he isn’t about to fall onto the floor. Then he checks the time. Inside seems to match out and he’s been in there for almost an entire day. He’s exhausted but he forces himself to eat a bunch of chocolate and a pair of greasy cheese sandwiches from a gas station. He considers ripping it into pieces and force feeding it to Sam but decides it probably won’t work like water did.

Dean gives himself two hours of sleep. It’s not enough but he’s gone on less. He doesn’t think they’ll fix Sam. He thinks Lucifer will take him and Dean will die a second later. And Cas. The world will end. He dreams and it’s all blood and when he wakes up his hands are shaking so violently that he cuts himself as he’s slicing up the dream root.

He brews the tea and takes it to the main room, sitting on the floor next to Sam. He leans against the base of the couch, the mug cradled in his hands, steam making him sweat and his eyes blur.

“Sammy, it’ll be fine,” he says quietly. “We beat the devil once already, we’ll do it again.” He sighs everything all out, his eyes burn and his throat aches and he lets it happen. This will be his last chance for real panic, he thinks, he’ll have to play hero back inside or nothing will work. He’ll get all the fear out now, with acid tears and slipping fingers. With swallowed screaming and fear and fear and fear. He does it there, in Rufus’ shack, so he doesn’t slip up later, cut the tips of his fingers off with a knife or catch his sleeve in a door while Lucifer laughs at them all. He’s seen Sam die too many times. He’s seen Cas die too many times. He’s been the cause of it.

It only lasts a few minutes, his messy breakdown, his choked out cries. As soon as he’s able, he gulps down the tea before he can change his mind (never, never). The cup slips from his fingers and he falls asleep with his head still cushioned against the side of the couch, turned toward his brother. 

 

Castiel can feel everything in anyone. Their bones, muscles, blood, skin. All that makes up a person. He can pick out your broken bits with careful fingers and set fractures with a touch. Air on skin like wind or cracking bones like a shrug. Dean is his favourite, to knit back together, to string veins along. Because he can feel something of the person Dean is when he’s stitching up wounds, more than he can any other time. Dean is hot and dry and fresh and dirty. Like twilight on a porch after swimming. Like salt on your skin and sand in your hair and summertime. Castiel hasn’t experienced these things in reality, not in any human way, but he has experienced Dean, and Dean inspires all sorts of impossible things. Maybe he could have felt them if getting out of Sam’s head wasn’t more impossible than even Dean could swing.

He would like to get closer though. Closer than healing flesh and bone, if Dean let him. Close in a human way. Even in Jimmy’s skin, sex might be something. It’s more his skin now anyway, he thinks. He’s scarred it far beyond what a human could bear and it moves like he moves. He doesn’t want to give something so used back to the Novak’s, it would be cruel. Dean probably wouldn’t like him as much in another vessel anyway, there was a reason he’d chosen such an attractive host. He’d pulled Dean out and fallen in love, and he wasn’t completely sure he’d got the gender wrong. Not even when Dean brought only girls back to motels. They were often blue eyed and dark haired and that made him smile. He should probably say something, he knows that, before death and destruction. But he’s died before without saying anything.

He watches Sam and thinks about what Dean wants most. Not him, not the angel who will die for him again. But it’s okay. It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay. Castiel isn’t in it for gratification. The girls with dark hair and blue eyes, Dean’s fingers on his neck and the expression on his face when he’d appeared in the middle of the road like a puppet on a string, all of those things are enough.

With Dean gone, Sam spends a lot of time pacing. Castiel watches him and thinks of Dean and almost doesn’t notice when Sam starts speaking to him.

“What?” Cas asks. “Sorry.” Sam laughs.

“I said, what are your intentions with my brother?” Cas frowns at that, doesn’t really know what it means, only that there’s more to it than just the question.

“I intend to wait until he returns and then collect the remaining pieces of your soul,” he says carefully. Sam shakes his head. He’s grinning with the brightest eyes, his skin looks like paper.

“No, I mean romantically.” Cas can’t help it, his skin burns and his jaw clenches. Castiel who knows how everything under your skin works, can’t help the blush and the fear and how caught out he suddenly feels. His eyes dart to the kid, suddenly scared of scarring the innocent, but little Sam has magicked up a crayon and paper and is drawing long lines, maps of imagined cities. Cas knows he shouldn’t even notice the child, but he is getting so human.

“I loved him from the moment I touched his soul in Hell. It was not romantic love then, not really, but I believe it is now.” He sighs out the words, rushing through them like they’re poison on his tongue. They’re not, they taste sweet.

“I think you should make a move,” Sam says, dead serious under his grin and his fevered eyes.

“No, this is not an appropriate place.” I will die here.

“It’s as good as any, he’s not going to make the first move.”

“It is for the best,” Cas says firmly. Sam shrugs.

“I’m just saying, Dean isn’t as aggressively straight as he pretends to be. Wait til after all this if you think it’s better, but you should at least say something.”

“Perhaps after,” Castiel allows. He keeps his eyes on the child, chubby fists clenched tight around a green crayon, drawing out dreamscapes with his fingertips and tasting it out with the tip of his tongue. He doesn’t want to see how serious Sam seems.

“I don’t want him to be alone.” Castiel starts at that, turning back to Sam quickly.

“He won’t be alone,” he says emphatically. It’s true, he’ll always have Sam, and that is alright, that is fine. 

“You’re right, you’re right,” Sam smiles wanly. He’s not convincing for even a second but Cas accepts it because arguing about that might get messy. He’ll confess his death and Sam will protest wildly and bring up Dean over and over. He’ll confess his death and Sam will accept it easily because it might cement him and Dean as him and Dean. He doesn’t want to hear any of those things, not even at the time which might be best because Dean isn’t there.

When Dean gets back hours later Sam is sitting with his palms on his knees next to the kid, who has amassed a huge number of drawings, brain maps and buildings, long hard lines in blues and greens. Over and over again the treehouse in soft colours, safe and glowing gold. Cas looks at each one as it’s finished and he inspects them carefully and nods. He likes the drawings, they look like the way he thinks about heaven. Too many lines and the softest colours. 

Dean ignores the drawings except to look at them in Cas’ hands and in Cas’ eyes. He sees something between Sam and Cas, they glance at one another when Dean kicks through the door. Then Sam is grinning so wide and his eyes dart between Dean and the angel and Cas won’t stop staring at him, but that’s nothing new. He scowls at them both, and the kid, and that’s nothing new either.

“What did you do while I was gone? Because it’s looking shady as shit from where I’m standing,” Dean says, dropping down between the two Sams. 

“Nothing, Dean,” Cas says, getting to his feet, placing the drawings carefully on the seat behind him. “Are you sufficiently rested?” 

“Uh yeah, Cas. We should do this then?” 

“Yes,” Cas nods. He’s keeps moving forward until there’s almost no space between their knees and Cas is looming. Next to Dean, Sam is smothering laughter behind his hand. Dean frowns, gets up like a shot, so fast that Cas stumbles back, snaps out of whatever it is he’s doing and blinks. “Yes,” he repeats.

“Good,” Dean glares at Sam because whatever this is, it’s definitely his fault. “Where’s the next one then?” Sam straightens his face up, nods curtly, like they’re finally down to business after all this play. He closes his eyes just briefly and he shivers it out, the location of souls. 

“Water, I don’t know. Flat as glass,” he says after a moment. “A lake, I guess.” 

“You got a direction for us, Sammy?” 

“West, go west until you can’t.” 

“West it is.” Dean looks to Cas like what’s it gonna be and Cas nods and they’re out the door. 

It’s changed again, because it’s always changing. It’s skeleton’s of houses, the bare bones, like a children’s playground, overlapping and impossible. The biggest house in the world but only the frame. It stretches out for as long as they can see and they have to step through doors and windows and under walls to go west. 

Cas follows Dean’s steps exactly, like there are mines between the rooms, and he keeps very close. At one point Dean stumbles and Cas’ hand ghosts at the back of his shirt but Dean doesn’t fall and Cas doesn’t touch him. 

“What do you think this Sam’ll be like?” Dean asks, an hour in, Cas’ silence getting too much for him.

“I don’t know, he will probably not be as pleasant as the child.” 

“He’s obnoxious, just like Sam was obnoxious,” Dean laughs. “Too smart for his own good. This one will probably be the same.” 

“I felt the same about my brothers,” Cas says, staring dead ahead. “Balthazar was...Balthazar taught me all my worst habits.” 

“Bad habits? You?” Dean smirks. “And here’s me thinking you’re an angel.” 

“I don’t know.”

“You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t.” 

The houses grow walls slowly, plank by plank, and soon they are navigating hallways and rooms within rooms and doors in windows in doors. Cas starts to get jittery, his eyes dart and he twists his angel sword in his hands like he’s wringing a handkerchief. 

“You okay Cas?” 

“I think we should get out of here. I don’t think this is right.” 

“We didn’t have a choice, it’s everywhere.”

“Knock it down, Dean,” Cas insists but Dean shakes his head.

“I’ve been trying every time I open a door,” he admits. “It doesn’t work. We’ll just keep going, Sam said the lake was this way, we’ll get there.” 

Cas falls miserably silent and Dean drags a hand across his shoulder and offers him a half smile and they continue through the maze.

When it turns into a hospital, Cas starts moving slow. He opens every door even when Dean rolls his eyes and frowns. The doors and walls and windows stop in the hospital and soon it’s just a long, wide, dark corridor. 

“Dean,” Cas says slowly. “Stop, we need to stop.” 

“No, we have to keep going,” Dean snaps.

Something is in the dark ahead and it makes Cas shake and it makes Dean vicious. He needs to see it. Figures moving in the dark, shadows and whispers. 

It is Lucifer, tip-toeing all of his lambs, his souls, his children of Hell. He skips them out like they are in a pageant and they do their best royal waves through gore and filth. Alistair and Lilith and Azazel holding hands. He sits on a throne made of fallen stars because that is what he is, in the hospital hallway sprung from nowhere, and his head is cocked to one side and Nick’s flesh burns off him like paper but it holds.

With her fondly smiling daddy, her torture teachers, her friends, Meg steps forward first, both of them. Ash blonde and wicked sharp eyes, hand in hand with her brunette twin with rosebud lips and leather. Their expressions are identical, slick smirks, and they are creepier than any horror film twins, even though their outfits don’t match.

“Hugs and puppies all around,” they coo in unison and chains rattle their free hands. Dean can see them, the hellhounds that scream at the end of those chains, and it is Hell all over again. They are made of smoke and rotting flesh and their jaws and eyes are fire and needles. Shadows are sharp on their master’s faces and he can see their skulls under their skin. He is frozen, he can’t breathe, cold and dumb with fear he wants to blink up something to kill nightmares, some savage weapon to destroy them where they stand, but he can’t even move.

“Dean.” Cas’ voice echoes in his head like he is underwater. He remembers claws and teeth buried in his flesh. He remembers dying. “Dean.” A hand warm and firm on his shoulder, he flinches and stumbles back into Cas’ chest. He is shaking so hard it feels like his teeth might shatter.

“Don’t you like my pets?” Both Meg’s smiles widen. One of the hellhounds howls. “I named them after you, George and Clarence of course.”

There is a flash of light, white and cold and completely disorienting, but Dean realises that Cas is gone immediately. Lucifer too, the throne left burning, crystals of ice melting over rock. The hospital is replaced by cracked earth. Only Dean and Meg and demons and dogs are left. And so because it’s Dean, he smiles and his fear is gone. It’s replaced by that thing that is always there in him, for Sam, for Bobby, for his father and for Cas. He will destroy those things, not real, things made by the devil, he will destroy them to get Cas back. He will tear Meg’s hair out, rip out Alistair’s teeth, pop Azazel’s eyes like grapes, and he smiles because they don’t know anything.

“Baby, baby, baby,” Alistair lisps, a scarecrow stumbling over his limbs.

“Look at that. Sam’s more broken than I ever made him.” Azazel smiles.

“You’ve been bad, Dean.” Lilith draws his name out with a schoolgirl pout and hands on hips and chalk dust hair. “You’re getting in the way.”

“Just like Clarence, always running out on a girl.” Brunette Meg licks her lips and the blonde rolls her eyes and the hellhounds snarl.

“Shit guys, enough with the bad guy quips. Did you rehearse this or something?” And actually they probably have, toys made up of Lucifer’s thoughts, special words recorded, pull out the string and hear all their catch phrases. Dean wriggles his fingers and angel sword is cold in his hands. It doesn’t matter what he uses to kill these things, shadows not demons, and the angel sword is so friggen cool he may as well.

“Hugs and p-puppies,” The Meg’s whisper and both of them twirl their wrists up, releasing the chains, the hounds plunge forward. But Dean is ready for this, he has any weapon he wants and he can see them. They are nightmares, but he can do whatever he wants in here and they can bleed. He flips the sword in one hand, he shifts his weight, he throws it like a knife and it leaves his hand with more force than it ever could even with all his strength behind it. It hits one dog in the chest and pierces it right through, driving up and out and dropping just as the animal does, slick with gore and smoke. The hellhound screams and bleeds and stills, it’s legs twitching, the smoke oozing from it’s wound eating through it’s skin. Dean faces the other, it snarls, it leaps, it is crushed to the floor as Dean makes an inelegant and clumsy slash with his whole arm, bringing down something, a piece of sky, something invisible and heavy enough that the hound is dashed all to pieces under it. Dean croaks out a cry of success, punches the air and doesn’t look at the mess in front of him. The demons look confused, blonde Meg is blinking faster than anything, her eyelashes a blur, Alistair’s head seems stuck at some strange angle, pivoted off from his neck, and his bones look all wrong.

Dean moves forward slowly, picking the sword as he goes, his eyes not wavering from the group in front of him. They don’t move either, they barely even register his presence, the yellow of Azazel’s eyes drips down his cheeks leaving behind blind greyness. Dean slips past both Megs to slam his palm into Alistair’s chest and the demon (not-demon) topples over. With a smirk, Dean kicks him, buries the angel sword deep in his chest and sighs deep.

“Okay Luci, bring Cas back now.” He sets about pushing the other demons over, incapacitating them properly.

Castiel is in the dark and Lucifer glows. He circles Cas, hands behind his back, playing big brother with a fond smile.

“It saddens me, Castiel, to see what they’ve turned you into. You’re not my brother anymore, we’re barely even the same species. You’re a broken thing. A Winchester toy and they don’t even want to play with you anymore.” Lucifer looks so sad, like he could cry for a thousand years and still feel it. “I think I could, uh, literally knock you down with a feather.” And just like that, any grief is gone and his smile is like a frosted summer morning, warm and cold at once, and beautiful, and sharp. Castiel can see him under Nick’s skin. “Maybe even one from those wings of yours, it’s not like you’ll be using them.”

The pain is sudden and intense and Castiel screams, can feel the hollow bones in his wings splintering and the feathers tearing from his flesh, and ice creeps through his veins. A twist of Lucifer’s fingers. He stumbles straight away, collapses to his knees, wishes there were some way of falling that bare his wings even more.

His back is hot with white light and torn shadows and the pain disappears quickly. Cas was an angel, still isn’t quite human and definitely isn’t flesh in here. But he can still feel it, empty and stretched across his shoulder blades, hanging bones and snapped feathers.

“I quite liked your stunt with Purgatory.” Lucifer sighs, slinking forward. Cas gets to his feet and doesn’t say anything when his brother spiders his fingers down Cas’ jaw. “Very cute. Of course, I would have preferred to watch without the tinted windows.”

“You’re referring to Sam.” Cas tries to match him for coldness, but the strangeness of broken wings, the echo of pain twists his voice and Lucifer’s smile is triumphant. 

“Well done,” he laughs and the ground quakes. “And actually, I really should thank you for making it possible, I suppose, Castiel. Without you to spectacularly fuck up hauling Sam out of Hell, I might not even be here.”

Cas stays silent, he focuses on burying his guilt because he will never be done with it, but he won’t give it to Lucifer. He stretches his shoulders back, his bones crack and the pain is electric. He won’t be flying, not with any immediacy.

“And the other one, I think you’ll probably ruin him, too.” Lucifer paces, steeples his fingers carefully. “Because you love him and isn’t that adorable. And he will break with all the effort he spends not loving you. Prince Charming, as emotionally stunted as always. Because they’re humans, they aren’t angels, they aren’t anything like you are Castiel, no matter how much you change.” Cas is almost ready to speak, to deny everything and to get destroyed in some stupid attempt at silencing him, but Lucifer cocks his head to one side, rolls his eyes. “Actually, Prince Charming is breaking other things,” he announces and he snaps a finger and they’re there. Lucifer’s demon puppets are sparking like cut wire.

Dean spots Cas at once, crumpled up small, his face smeared with dirt and tears. He can’t see the wings, but Cas’ back seems to be cut through with jagged light. Blinding light. He lunges forward and as soon as they’re touching Cas uses all his strength, everything he has, and Lucifer and his throne and his kids fall away.

They don’t make it back, the pain is too much and Cas falters. Propelling back out of the strange nothing-space that Cas uses to transport them, outside of everything, fast and smooth, they crash into a shallow, murky lake. Weighed down by their clothes, and Cas by not-blood and broken wings, they slump into water. Dean sketches out weapons in the air but nothing has followed them. The water around Cas feels metallic somehow, slippery, not even really wet.

“What did Lucifer do to you?” Dean asks. “Are you, can I...” He gestures helplessly with one hand, patting at the air, attempting comfort but unable to articulate it clearly.

“He...hurt my wings.” Cas lies back in the water, closing his eyes. The water oozes. “Please, give me a moment.” And it’s really all it takes. Just a breath, a heartbeat, and the water thins, the metallic feel (taste, smell) fades, Cas opens his eyes and they are as brilliant as Dean has ever seen them, like a lightning storm.

Simultaneously they become aware of someone watching them. Dean shifts, automatically moving in front of Cas who struggles against the water and against pain to get to his feet. It is Sam, maybe taller and colder and fiercer, but Sam all the same. Sam with no soul, Sam who didn’t sleep, Cas’ Sam when Dean is feeling particularly bitter.

He is dressed entirely in black and he watches them and his eyes are black too.

“Sam?” Dean moves through the water, wringing his hands, his clothes drying with the movement. Cas follows, slower and wetter and careful not to bump his injuries. The Sam thing doesn’t speak, just watches. “Uh, you gonna come with us to...Bobby’s okay?”

“I do not think it likely that he will speak, Dean,” Cas says quietly. Sam’s eyes follow him. “It’s possible he cannot.”

“Well, at least he can’t say yes,” Dean mutters, hoping, not believing at all, that’s true. Cas just inclines his head slightly, a semblance of agreement. Anything with a thought can say yes, even just a fraction of a person. Even just a wire spark, an ember.

The Sam thing follows them without any effort on their part. It moves in silence, keeping up with Dean exactly, taking each step as he does but his feet (bare with blackened soles and brittle nails) don’t seem to disturb the ground at all.

Cas stumbles about halfway there and he keeps stumbling, making little gasps of pain, leaking light from his back, until Dean hauls the angel’s arm over his shoulder, grips his wrist and shrugs his body closer. Cas resists only for a second before collapsing, just a little bit, against Dean’s shoulder.

“You been eating rocks for breakfast again Cas?” Dean grunts, but he’s smiling because he knows Cas can’t see it.

It’s slow, but eventually they reach the house. It’s strange the way they can get there without knowing where they’re coming from. Like metal to a magnet or like it changes places though the distance remains the same. Dean wants to test out his control, snap his fingers and teleport, but he’s afraid he’ll lose Cas or Sam and won’t be able to find them again. Maybe Cas would turn back into a paper doll.

Sam backs away so quickly when he sees his soulless self that the house rattles with his loss of control. The furniture leaks colour and it puddles, murky grey on the floor. The kid, curled up at at one corner of the sofa, burbles nonsense in his sleep.

“What happened to Cas?” Sam asks through gritted teeth.

“Lucifer. It’s fine, he’s...well we got away. I’m gonna take Cas upstairs.” Sam nods miserably, dropping down onto the couch next to the sleeping child. Soulless Sam doesn’t move, just watches him without blinking. The grey water pools at his feet.

Dean practically has to drag Cas up the stairs which is disconcerting when the only real sign there’s anything wrong with him is his coat all torn up at the back and glowing around the edges. He’s breathing heavy and he keeps making his little sighs of pain whenever Dean jolts or hits something wrong, but otherwise he looks how he always looks.

Upstairs isn’t as well sketched out as downstairs. Everything is pale, the curtains are grey and the wooden floors look bleached out, watered down. Dean is scared to look out the windows because he thinks it will be different, it will be Hell outside from this height. He eases Cas down onto the bed as soon as they’re in the room and Cas whimpers and hisses and Dean flinches at his pain.

Cas settles himself on the bed, he hugs his knees, baring his back to the air and resting his forehead against his arms. Dean sits next to him, leaning close to inspect the wounds. There is something there under his torn up clothing, shallow cuts that bleed nothing but electricity. If he squints, he can see something moving in the air above them, moving shadows or flickering light, warmth. Cas’ wings, the thought sticks in his throat and he moves away.

“It hurts?” he asks, and he scowls at how ragged his voice sounds. “You can’t heal it?”

“I am...reluctant to try, I need to save what Grace I have to help Sam.”

“Right, yeah,” Dean nods, shifting uncomfortably. He watches the burning light and thinks it should be searing Cas’ flesh to charcoal even in a dream. There is still angel in him. “You’ll stay here until it’s fixed?”

“I would heal just as well anywhere else. Bed rest is not necessary.”

“Yeah well, it feels necessary,” Dean spits back. “So you’re staying. Is there anything else I can do?”

“If I must stay here, I would like it if you...remained with me.” There is no change in his voice but Dean can see the way Cas’ fingers curl around his knees and it makes him feel kind of like throwing up. He’s glad Cas can’t see his face because he knows he probably looks insane, stuck between running forever and staying just a little while. Nauseous and happy.

“Sure, Cas,” he says after a long pause, and it’s even longer before he decides to touch him. It’s nothing, it’s a comfort thing, it’s what friends do. His hand on the back of Cas’ neck, light, barely there, and maybe he strokes his skin with the pad of his thumb, just a little bit, and maybe he curls his fingers into his hair, just a little bit, but it’s nothing. Cas leans into his touch slightly and it’s only because Dean can’t see his face that he stays until the white light fades and the skin knits and all that’s left is ragged cloth with singed edges.

Dean stands up, Cas rolls his shoulders and cracks his neck. They walk downstairs together and the room Sam is in has changed. It’s darker, the windows are black and Sam is rigid in his seat, his hands like claws at his sides. In front of him, standing stock still and expressionless, is the thing with no soul. He’s wrapped in rope, at his ankles and his wrists and his elbows. A noose at his neck. Sammy, the kid, is staring at him and frowning, his hands behind his back like he’s inspecting something at a museum.

“Sam?”

“I couldn’t tie the little one up. I should though, shouldn’t I?”

“Yes,” Cas says.

“Not if you don’t want to,” Dean corrects. “I don’t think the kid is going anywhere.”

“I’m not,” he insists, turning to them. “I’m not stupid.”

“Hey, I know Sammy, you’re smarter ‘n everyone,” Dean soothes, ruffling the kids hair with only slightly hesitant fingers.

“What about the rest? There are more, I can feel them,” Sam says. He’s looking like he might tear himself to pieces with his shaking hands, or rip all his hair out, start pulling teeth. The air around them feels the same, set to blow, sharp and clear like the air before a lightning storm.

“We’ll get them Sam, and if they’re as hard to look at as this guy we’ll tie them up and throw them in a cage or something until they’re needed.” He reaches over and tugs at the rope around the soulless Sam’s neck. “This guy, I’ll stick him in a box.” He slams a hand against the closest stretch of wall and grins scary wide at the door his palm conjures up. He opens it and it’s pitch black inside and the air is stale and strange. Without a word, he’s pushes soulless Sam through the door and slams it shut. The sound echoes and the kid laughs.

“Oh,” Sam says.

“Easy as pie,” Dean declares.

“Good,” Cas says quietly. He sits down away from the brothers and for the first time he feels like he is intruding on something, that thing the Winchesters have. Dean is smiling wide to hide his fear and Sam looks wrecked and the child is looking tired again, rubbing at his face and trying not to yawn. It hadn’t mattered before, Cas had been oblivious before, but now he arranges his face into an expression of indifference, something neutral. Once he wouldn’t have been acting, when emotions were trivial things, just another incomprehensible part of God’s favourite species. Now he has to guard himself against all of it, just like any human. He has to pretend he doesn’t mind being second best to either of them. He thinks about what that might mean, if Dean fixes this, if they get out of Sam’s head and into reality, if that were possible without Cas’ death. What might he turn into? A cold and weary thing who only doesn’t react because he won’t allow it. Or maybe the other side of the coin, someone who thrives on emotion, someone who tries every single thing to feel more and more and more. More than lust and more than fear and more than love. Already he can taste the beginnings of that when he remembers Sam talking about Dean, what are your intentions with my brother? Or any time Dean touches him or Sam actually hugging him. A goofy grin at Cas’ surprise. Dean’s hand on his neck, in his hair. But they have each other, and what would he have?

Dean had called him brother, but that had been before. And besides, Adam was their brother too, and where was he? Maybe they use the word as a disguise, family doesn’t mean them plus all their strays, it is only ever Sam and Dean. Everyone expendable and if they fall behind or slip up or break down, they are left. But Sam said Dean wanted him, didn’t he? A rush of heat burns at the back of his throat and eyes and he stares at his fists, clenched tight in his lap. Guilt. The Winchesters have done nothing but help him, change him for the better, fix him. Well. He relaxes his hands and he looks to the floor and he thinks only about what he is. The angel who isn’t an angel, the thing that broke Sam, not God, not Cas, not anything familiar, nothing recognisable, nothing for either Winchester to latch on to. It will be easier and he deserves it.

“There’s two more,” Sam says. “I don’t know what they are, it hurts to think about.”

“Then don’t, we’ll take care of it,” Dean slumps down on the couch next to Sam. “Right, Cas?”

“Right.”

 

With the kid asleep again and the shell locked in a room, Dean starts to get hopeful. There’s a tiny part of him that thinks they might win. They’re halfway there and he’s sure they’re through the worst. They have to be. He grins at Cas, victorious and tired and he’s about to suggest they head out again, get this over with, when the screaming starts. It’s Sam who takes it worse, the sobbing coming from this place he made so safe. All colour drains from his face and Dean thinks he can hear his bones splintering he’s so tense. Littlest Sam starts away, swallows sobs and crawls over Sam to tug at Dean’s shirt, but Dean can’t move either.

Cas charges through the room without a word and that snaps Dean out of staring in horror at his bone broke brother. He tears after Cas and pushes him aside when he finds the angel peering through the window into the panic room.

“It’s Sam,” Cas says quietly and Dean nods because it was always going to be Sam. His brother only a couple of years ago, stained with demon blood and pacing. Screaming and crying and trapped. He notices Dean straight away and stumbles toward the door.

“Dean please, you gotta let me out. It’s killing me, they’re killing me, I’ll be good. I’ll stop, I will. Dean.” His face is ghostly green and Dean slams the shutter closed and the screaming starts again. This is worse, this is the worst.

Dean bows his head against the cold metal and Cas watches him, he knows what will happen next. Dean will take a moment, one breath, then he will rise, he will square his shoulders and clench his jaw, he will be okay until he allows himself another moment in hours or days or years.

“Leave him, where can he possibly go?” Dean mutters grimly, and he’s gone.

Cas slides the shutter open and looks through. Sam blinks his eyes black and Cas can see the poisoned blood oozing from his pores, lining his insides like tar. This had been the Sam Cas had known first. The abomination who was always trying so hard to save everyone and everything. Led astray by the demon Ruby, but with all the best intentions. He had believed in angels and was so disappointed by their reality.

“You won’t always be like this,” Castiel says quietly. Sam opens his mouth wider than is possible in a silent scream, the corners of his mouth tear and bleed and Cas closes the shutter and follows Dean back up.

Back in the lounge, Dean is pacing and Sam is all tension and worry. As Cas walks in Dean turns and his eyes are full of accusation that Cas doesn’t understand.

“This is your fault,” he snarls. “You think anyone wants to remember how Sam was then? You’ve forced this, just like you always force everything. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was deliberate, you set yourself up as the only way out of a disaster you fucking created.”

“I didn’t -”

“I don’t care.”

“Dean,” Sam says quietly. “He’s going to get us out of here.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s forgiven, he’s giving us what’s owed. As soon as we’re out, you’re gone.”

“Yes,” Cas agrees looking all close faced, the old Castiel. He bows his head slightly, his expression falters and for a second he looks terrified, but he leaves the room with his mouth set hard and his eyes as cold as steel.

“Yeah, get out of my sight,” Dean mutters, grinding a heel into the carpet until it breathes smoke.

“He’s not some calculated psycho, Dean. He’s made mistakes, he’s trying to fix them,” Sam says and the kid nods fervently,

“I like Castiel.” Dean glares at them.

“You, Sam, like everyone,” he points out. “You think we can move that demon shit into the room with the soulless one? This is so...so fucking weird. Let’s go with soundproof, that screaming is really...”

“Later. Look, I’ve forgiven him, why can’t you? And I mean, I have theories about that but I know what you’ll say.”

“We’re really going to do this now, Sam? Okay, okay sure, your theories are bullshit.” Dean is as airy as he always is when something hits him all wrong, like every time he remembers how smart Sam is and how he probably knows something about everything and everything about Dean. He knows exactly what Sam’s theories are and even while wondering what an angel tastes like he would think they were stupid. “All of them, you know why? Because all of that before, it’s not true. I’m not angry at Cas, I don’t even blame him really, I just want him to leave. We destroy everything we touch, he’s already broke, he’s not even an angel anymore. Maybe if we cut him loose when we get outta here he’ll get better.”

“You’re not angry? Why make him think you are then?” Sam ignores the bit where Cas would be okay on his own, newly human and always bizarre, because that is absurd and they’re having a different discussion here.

“I think he’ll be more likely to leave if he thinks I hate him,” Dean says, looking slightly uncomfortable. “And I’m not angry, not really. Obviously I was but you can’t really be pissed at someone for being stupid. Otherwise me and you would’ve killed each other a long time ago. He fucked up and I think that part of it was our influence.” His words are so dangerously true that all Sam can do is laugh.

“Who are you and what have you done with my brother?” he smirks and Dean rolls his eyes, shrugs his shoulders,

“Real fucking funny, maybe angels are a good influence on me or something.”

“Speaking of, want to hear my other theory?”

“Not for all the bacon cheeseburgers in the world, Sammy.”

“I’ve already talked to him about it.” Dean barks out a laugh,

“I bet that was a fucking nightmare.”

“Seriously Dean, if you would just -”

“Seriously Sam, we are not ever going to have this conversation ever.” And his voice is so concrete and final that all Sam does is sigh long sufferingly, lean back in the sofa and roll his eyes at the kid who laughs and mimics his expression exactly. 

Sam counts it as a victory though. More than that, it was practically an outright admission even if Dean didn’t say the words. And it fits too, really. Just like Dean to be admitting things in the most fucked up setting imaginable. Just like Dean to pretend none of it was happening. Even with three pieces caught and one left, Sam still doesn’t think he’s going to get out of there, out of his head and into real life gain. He’ll be stuck in Bobby’s house forever, everything draining out of him slowly, walls crumbling until Lucifer can smile him into saying yes. He wants Dean to wake up alright with Cas next to him, patched up and smiling. All these impossible things.

Cas comes back and he’s pulling the demon drunk Sam behind him on a heavy chain. His eyes are bound with Cas’ tie and his mouth is open and dripping blood. 

“Open your room, Dean. He should not stay in that place.” 

“Are you fucking insane?” Dean demands, actually kind of stunned. Behind him, Sam is opening and closing his mouth in shock. Cas doesn’t even blink.

“Open the door please, Dean.” 

Dean looks like he’d rather cut Cas’ head off. But he snatches the chain from Cas’ hands, shoulders him out out of the way and slams a boot into the wall. The door cracks open and he knocks the bleeding demon Sam through into darkness. 

“Thank you.” Cas says but Dean is shaking his head over and over.

“No. Just...no,” he heads for the door and Cas looks vaguely frantic and both Sam’s look irritated as only a brother can be.

“Dean,” Sam warns and Dean whirls back around.

“No one follow me,” he snaps, pointing a finger threateningly, and he knows that at least Sam will have to listen to him for once. He’s out of Bobby’s house in a second and their surroundings have changed again. A forest of skeleton trees and actual skeletons, ribs arching out of the ground and skulls crunching under his feet. Everything is bleached white. Dean wonders if it’s Sam’s influence or Lucifer’s, he wouldn’t be surprised by either. Lucifer’s skulls would probably still have flesh on.

The sounds of bones cracking under his boots never stops being disturbing but he can’t pick his way around them, there are too many. He stumbles more than walking, latching onto the bare branches of the trees to keep from falling entirely. He closes his eyes for a minute and wills the bones to be their fallen leaves, autumn coloured and he will kick them, but when he looks, the skulls are just stained red and orange and yellow and they’re still grinning and he kicks one anyway.

Castiel finds him pulling teeth out of a skull because it’s not real and I’m pissed off and is hauling him to his feet and slamming him against the trunk of a tree so fast and sudden that Dean can only blink. For a split second he thinks that it’s a trick, that it’s not Cas, a real Castiel-thing this time, but (and it’s probably the tea, not Cas’ expression) he looks at Cas’ face and he just knows. He doesn’t know why Cas looks murderous and why his hands are white knuckled at Dean’s collar.

“Cas,” he chokes out and Cas lets him go, instead pressing his palms flat against Dean’s shoulders, searching his face with such serious eyes. They search out everything Dean could ever think or say and they are wide and strange. Blue, moving rapidly, an insect’s wings or a guttering candle, searching. Dean swallows. He kind of knows what’s going to happen. He isn’t ready for this at all, but he can’t move for wanting it.

When Cas presses his mouth against his, it’s soft at first, dry and warm and uncertain. When Dean doesn’t move, doesn’t breathe, doesn’t think, Cas presses forward, more insistent. His lips part and Dean’s throat aches, he turns his head away and Cas’ mouth burns a line to his ear.

“Don’t,” is all Dean manages, his vision is so blurred the skulls really do look like autumn leaves. Cas stays for a moment, his breath hot and damp down Dean’s neck, then he rocks back on his heels, he separates them and Dean feels the loss sharply.

“You shouldn’t have come out here on your own,” Cas says quietly. Dean blinks rapidly. He stares at the skulls.

“I’m fine, I have more mojo than you do in this place.” He shoots one more fierce look at the piles of bones and turns back to Cas. “I was about to come back anyway.”

“Good.” Cas turns abruptly and Dean’s reaction is physical. A flinch, violent and involuntary, he reaches for Cas and the angel (human, not-angel) pauses, turns and is back. Apparently he’s gained a lot of confidence in a short time because he moves so quickly and then his tongue is in Dean’s mouth and his hands are pressing fingerprints down Dean’s jaw and across his cheekbones.

Dean has almost forgotten what it’s like to kiss a boy. They’re harder than girls, burning stubble and jawlines and he’s surprised to find he misses it. Or maybe it’s just Cas. He pushes himself into the kiss, gripping the lapels of Cas’ coat ten spidering his fingers over his shoulder to pull him closer. Cas tastes like snow and fire all at once and he never wants to taste anything else. Dean finds himself inexplicably thinking of he time in the alleyway when Cas had beaten him to pulp, he remembers the last thought he’d had before he’d blacked out, just as ridiculous: beautiful. Dean’s teeth drag across Cas’ lower lip and Cas moans into his mouth and his knee pushes between Dean’s thighs and Dean realises exactly where they are and what is happening and he pushes Cas away and bolts.

He doesn’t wait to see Cas’ confusion, hurt, anger. He doesn’t wait to see Cas carve a path of destruction through bones and branches because it’s the only thing that seems appropriate. The only way he knows to express all the emotions he’s not used to having. Instead, Dean marches back toward the house, kicking every skull into tiny pieces and muttering nonsense under his breath.

“This is your fault,” he snarls at Sam once he’s back inside. Sam looks confused then delighted. “You gave him ideas.”

“Oh my God, did Cas seduce you?”

“Shut up, don’t even...don’t speak. This is your fault.”

When Cas comes back he doesn’t say anything, his hands are deep in his pockets and he moves carefully, a bull in a china shop.

“So do you think there are any more?” Dean asks Sam, pointedly ignoring Castiel. He flips a knife between his fingers and the blade is beaten black and red.

“Uh yeah, there’s one,” Sam says. “it’s...” he shivers, stretches out his bones. “I don’t know, it’s a building. It’s close.” Dean cocks his head at Cas, licks his lips.

“I think I’ll take this solo,” he says, way too casual. The knife is gone, it’s in his smile. “You don’t mind, right Cas?”

“That is not an option, Dean.”

“Yeah, it really isn’t Dean.” Sam nudges at his brother with a shoulder. “Don’t be stupid about this.”

“Who’s being stupid? Not me,” Dean snarls. “I work better alone.” That hits everyone hard and Sam turns steel and Cas stands up even straighter, a statue. Even Dean looks a little surprised he’s said it, he frowns and plucks irritably at the sleeve of his shirt. Sam sighs.

“No way, you have to go together. I don’t trust either of you in my head alone.”

“Well that’s too bad Sammy, cause I’m going and he is not coming with me.”

“Jesus Christ Dean, you’re not even going to say anything to him?” For a second Dean looks murderous, like he will actually kill Cas to get out of speaking to him, but slowly he calms and a smile spreads across his face.

“Fuck it, you know what? Hey Cas!” Cas looks terrified and hopeful and suspicious. Dean grins like he wants something. “How about after all this is finished we find somewhere quiet and I make good on my promise.”

“I...I’m unsure what you’re referring to,” Cas says quietly.

“I won’t let you die a virgin. Again.” It will be sex, Dean decides, nothing else. It will scratch an itch and satisfy curiosity, there will be no strings and it will mean nothing.

The effect Dean’s words have on Castiel is instantaneous. His face flushes red and his eyes shine wide and fearful. He swallows, he looks to Sam who is silently shaking with laughter, and then he spots the younger Sam, who is frowning.

“This is...an inappropriate discussion to have around a child,” he says in the most level voice he can manage.

“I know about virgins,” the smallest Sam declares with certainty. “Boys can’t be em, only girls. Don’t know about angels though.” He looks at Cas dubiously. Sam is bent in half, clutching at his stomach, laughing like it might kill him, and Dean looks like all his wishes have come true.

“Well talk about it later then, right Cas?” Dean winks and Cas swallows and Sam gasps for breath. For a second, Castiel wonders what Dean would do if he accepted the offer immediately. If he dragged Dean to a bedroom and pushed him on the bed and tore at his clothes with all the confidence he’d had in the forest of bones. He’d probably balk at that, pull away or flinch or react violently, even if Sam told him otherwise. Cas couldn’t even remember if Dean had kissed back, maybe he’d imagined it. When he realises Dean is watching him, Cas meets his eyes fierce, and Dean grins like hard sunlight.

Then there’s a horrible moment where they remember what’s happening and Sam wilts and Cas sighs and Dean steels himself.

“Right. Business comes first I guess,” Dean says. He’s good at this. Going from loose shouldered ease and wicked lines to dead eyed determination. It’s a flipped switch and it’s easy and it doesn’t matter. He’ll keep going and get the job done and flip again and everything will be fixed by the end of it. All of this is the filler, the emptiest part of a person who is so filled up.

“The last one,” Cas says, sounding tired and confident. 

“Good luck,” Sam offers, but he sounds terrified and defeated.

“Shut up, Sam.” 

Dean salutes him as they leave, a crooked gesture with a broken smile, and Cas stumbles slightly walking behind. It’s grass again outside, golden like the hope that this will all be finished soon. Dean drags his hands through it and he won’t smile yet, but soon.

Dean leans into Cas now as they walk. It’s okay, touching, shoulders pressed together, they have an understanding. With every step Cas knows he’s closer to dying but he doesn’t say anything, just makes sure they’re always touching and hopes Dean feels everything he does in that. Dying will be final this time, there will be nothing left of him to send to purgatory, no possibility of creeping through dreams and clawing his way back. His Grace will dissolve into air and light. He shifts closer, he curls his arm around Dean’s, touches his fingertips to the inside of Dean’s wrist and tries not to feel too bad when Dean shrugs it off and moves away.

The building springs up ahead of them, splintering bones, the pieces clicking together like it’s made of the blocks children play with, one square at a time. The windows drip down the frames like sugar syrup before hardening into glass. It takes Dean a while to recognise the place, uniform windows and twilight. Sam’s apartment building at Stanford, the night Dean decided to recruit his younger brother. Just before Jessica died. He knows it’s that night, he doesn’t think he’ll ever forget that night, not even with everything that’s happened since.

“Well, this is going to be horrible,” he sighs and is marching forward before Cas can comment.

Inside, everything is rusting. Even the wallpaper is stained dirty brown. It’s rotting and old and Dean thinks of course it is. He tries to retrace his steps from that night, get to the right room quick, but nothing is where it should be and walls spring up out of nowhere or melt into the carpet at their feet.

“This shouldn’t be hard, Dean. You can make this place what you want it to be,” Castiel says. He touches the back of Dean’s hand with the tips of his fingers and it’s so light and hesitant that Dean almost wants to hit him. He needs something solid, not scared, in this place falling to pieces.

“No, I can’t,” he snaps. “This isn’t my place.”

“It doesn’t matter, it’s not real.” But Dean shakes his head.

“Oh, it’s real,” he mutters. He doesn’t even want to try explaining that this place, even the bits that are wrong, remind Dean that this was where he ruined Sam’s life. This was Sam’s escape and he burned it. He shakes his head, “this way,” he announces, and he grips Cas by the sleeve and drags him down the hallway.

The door is ringed in fire that burns cold and burns out as soon as Dean touches the handle. It swings open immediately and it’s full of fire too. But it doesn’t burn and Dean doesn’t flinch away from the flame and Castiel frowns at it and it burns brighter.

Sam hits Dean fast and low and Dean yelps in surprise, swinging blindly and catching Sam’s jaw with his fist. Sam rocks back on his heels, narrowing his eyes at his brother, breathing heavy, the bruise on his jaw darkening and fading in a second.

“Easy tiger,” he growls and Dean flinches away, scrambling to his feet and backing into Cas who is dragging his fingers through the flames spitting off the walls and shaking his head.

“I think you’re stealing my line there, Sammy,” Dean says carefully and Sam grins and stands,

“What the hell are you doing here?” He’s all smiles now and he seems somehow younger than the kid they left back at Bobby’s. This Sam thinks he’s escaped, gonna be a lawyer, gonna get married, gonna be normal. For Sam aged six through twelve, escape was impossible.

“Nothing, uh, just wanted to check up on you.”

“You can’t just break in, middle of the night, and expect me to hit the road with you,” Sam rasps like he hasn’t heard Dean, he cocks his head at Cas like he’s surprised to see him. Castiel turns away from the flame.

“We need you to come with us, Sam,” he says, grave and haloed on fire.

“All right. I’ll go. I’ll help you find him,” he says, rolling his eyes exaggeratedly. Dean looks like he’s about to shatter and he slashes a hand short and sharp through the air when Castiel looks about to ask questions. Sam offers them both a grin then ducks into the bedroom. A minute later he’s back, frowning slightly, looking exactly like something has gone missing and he can’t quite remember how he lost it. “Um, this is my girlfriend Jessica,” he starts, but something clicks in his head and he’s smiling again. “Woah, easy tiger,” he laughs.

“Christ,” Dean turns away.

They leave the house quiet and no one even reacts to outside, a burned out world raining ash and cracked and scorched and shaking. Castiel catches the falling grey on his fingertips and Sam laughs and combs them from his hair. Dean leads with a sword in each hand because they’re so close and because he knows that this is where it could all go wrong.

“I got an interview here. Monday. If it goes okay I think I got a shot at a full ride next year,” he says like a smiling robot made flesh. The realest robot because his eyes are so happy when he speaks. Except when something catches behind his eyes and he fades. He turns back the way they came for a moment, his hand raised like a question and a furrow in his brow. He mouths out her name with confusion, he doesn’t know what he’s saying, she’s on the tip of his tongue. “What would I do without you?” he smiles.

Dean ignores it and grips the swords tighter because he only met Jessica once and he doesn’t trust himself to say the right thing. Even if he knew her perfectly and even if she hadn’t died, he would say the wrong thing. Besides, he’s heard these words before and changing his responses won’t change what happened

“I’m sure Jessica is lovely,” Cas says, soothing, and Dean throws him a grateful glance. 

“You know how I feel about Halloween,” Sam says happily.

Sam repeats himself over and over and Jessica and John Winchester are behind every word. Dean is set to break by the time they get to Bobby’s. He shoves Sam through the door and into the room, ignoring the rest of them, slamming open the room where the demon and the shell are locked away and pushing Sam in to join them. He’s smiling right up until the door closes.

Dean leans against it heavily, like he’s scared they’ll burst out. Sam is shaken up, confused and the kid is the youngest he’s ever been. Wriggly and giggly and tugging on his toes with fat jointed fingers. Scared and fascinated by everything all at once.

“You got it,” Sam says, so obviously stunned by it that Dean laughs.

“Obviously,” he grins. “Did you ever doubt it?”

“Uh, yeah.” 

“Stupid.” 

“If you open the door, I can bring them out,” Cas says gently. Dean smiles, this is actually happening. They’ve beaten the dragon and rescued the princess. Sam’s hair is long enough anyway. They’ve beaten the dragon and rescued the princess and they’ll ride off into the sunset and Cas will be there too, the sidekick who is more than that. Part of the story. Family. 

Dean cracks his knuckles against the door, smiling as it opens, not scared or angry like before. It doesn’t matter what college boy Sam says or what soulless Sam doesn’t, it doesn’t matter that there’s a bleeding demon in there because they won’t last long and they’ll be real Sam, true Sam, Sam Winchester before long. 

The door swings open and Dean steps away and Cas hauls them out by their chains or sleeves and ropes them together with the soulless Sam’s noose. Jessica’s Sam looks slightly confused underneath his smile.

“This is not going to be my life,” he whispers. 

“Shut up, Sammy!” 

Dean is golden. He doesn’t care that the soulless Sam is actually drooling a little bit or that tiniest Sam, who has shuffled over to stand with the group, looks terrified, because everything is actually working and he is golden. He smiles at Cas and he winks and Cas’ stomach turns. Dean claps his hands.

“So Cas, how’s it work?” The worst question he was always going to ask. Cas breathes deep,

“I will use my Grace to glue the pieces back together.” Cas can barely look at Dean. Dean’s smile fades, replaced slowly by confusion.

“What?”

“Cas, no.” Sam has figured it out, he understands what will happen, he looks at Dean scared and so sorry.

“But you need your Grace,” Dean says stubbornly. He should have expected this. “How much?”

“It will require the entirety of my Grace. I will become human and die as Sam wakes.” He speaks like a robot, his eyes fixed on the floor, so intent all he can see is blurred colour.

“No. No. This is...why didn’t you tell us?” The room seems to darken with his anger and Cas half expects him to spit flames. “Why tell me now?” Cas looks up, meets Dean’s eyes finally. Broken glass.

“I wanted to say goodbye. This time.” It hurts to look at them, Dean’s face all etched in horror, new scars forming, and Cas desperate and new and old, Sam turns away and...

“Sam is gone,” he says quietly and everyone stares at him. It’s the kid, of course, young and scared and unimpressed by himself and his big brother, not a hero, scareder than he is. The front door is swinging on its hinges. Dean throws out a length of rope with sharp movements and tosses it to Sam

“Tie them up, check the house, me and Cas will look outside.”

“He’s not here, I think he’s by the lake.”

“Check the house.” The look Dean gives Sam is only a beat longer than it should be, but it is all he can spare. There isn’t time to put all that last goodbye sentiment into words and it doesn’t matter anyway. Dean will find the brat, drag him back, Cas will put all his last goodbye sentiment into beautiful and shattering words and Sam and Dean will wake up. Back to normal, like it should be, end of story. He ignores the part of him that protests, the part that thinks back to normal has to include Cas, part of the story, family, and he grabs his angel-not-angel by the sleeve and hauls him out the door.

Behind them, Sam sways in place and closes his eyes. He can feel the house grow smaller. The basement melts into a puddle with a sound like water down a drain and the Sam they’d found down there screams and tugs at the ropes that hold him until they start to fray. Upstairs disappears with a pop, the air rushing into the space it had left behind, and in less than a minute the only room left is the one they’re in. Sam sits down on the couch, places his hands carefully on his knees, and waits for it all to end.

“Zap us there,” Dean demands as he and Cas stumble out into the field. He grips Cas’ wrist and pulls him forward.

“I can’t, I don’t have enough strength,” Cas insists. He’s scared that if he tries he will no longer be able to save Sam anyway. He can feel his Grace failing and there is something building in the back of his throat too. He recognises it as tears, grief, fear, still unfamiliar, he swallows it back, choking a little. “I can’t.” And Dean growls out something indecipherable and tightens his hold.

It’s the contact he wants, not the speed. Castiel can easily keep up, both him and Dean know it, but they take something from Dean’s fingers curled around Cas’ wrist. All their fears are coming to life and it makes them run faster.

The world starts falling apart before they find anyone. Huge chucks of the landscape detach like they’ve been let off their leash. Entire hills groan and crack and rise to hover in the air like mushroom caps and it all feels wrong. The air is still and silent, a breath drawn in and held. Dean ignores everything and his fingernails dig sharp into Castiel’s arm. The sky has come out in veins.

When Dean sees Sam and Lucifer splashing in the lake, smiles like knives, he speeds up breakneck. But Cas can see it’s too late, can see it in the sky stained bloody and sick and the white light growing and everything else muted grey. It’s nuclear, walls of water and mushroom clouds. He moves as fast as he ever has and his still broken wings groan their protest but hold.

Dean has fallen and his palms are ragged and bleeding and Cas doesn’t say anything, doesn’t wait for a word or a gesture because this is Dean. He just reaches out, gathering his Grace, bracing himself for after, and pulls Dean into the air. 

They fall awake and Cas hauls Dean away from where he’s slumped next to his sleeping brother. His angel brother. Dean screams but Cas takes him away before he can hurt anything worse and behind them Sam’s eyes open like frost. 

“Whatever you do, you will always end up here,” Dean says later as he lets Cas, with a bruised cheek bone and bloodied lips, bandage up his knuckles. “Tomorrow, you’re gone.” 

“Tomorrow I’m gone,” Cas echoes. He waits for that, for Dean to repeat the words. Tomorrow you’re gone. Tomorrow when Cas can learn another way to feel human. Tomorrow when Dean can burn another hole in Cas’ skin with his tongue. Tomorrow when Lucifer crushes them all to pieces with the heel of his snow white shoe.


End file.
